php/php-gtk-src

PHP-GTK: PHP language bindings for GTK+ toolkit

PHP-GTK is a PHP extension that enables you to write client-side cross-platform GUI applications. This is the first such extension of this kind and one of the goals behind it was to prove that PHP is a capable general-purpose scripting language that is suited for more than just Web applications.

This extension will not allow you to display GTK+ programs in a Web browser, and can be used in the Web environment only if you are running the webserver locally. It is intended for creating standalone GUI applications.

Requirements

As a prerequisite, you should have a CLI binary (command-line) version of PHP installed along with the header files and development scripts. They should normally be installed when you do 'make install' in the PHP source tree.

Currently, PHP-GTK requires PHP 5.1.2 or greater to run, and to build.

PHP-GTK supports GTK+ v2.6 and requires v2.6 or greater. The latest stable release of GTK+ can be obtained from ftp://ftp.gnome.org/pub/gnome/sources/gtk+/.

Installation and testing

After unpacking the distribution or checking out the sources from the CVS, change into the base directory and do the following.

First, run './buildconf' script that comes with PHP-GTK. It will set up necessary files and create 'configure' script for you. Next, run './configure'. It will check that you have proper version of GTK+ and other files required for compilation and create the Makefile's.

PHP-GTK supports extensions which can be configured via 'configure' script switches that you can see by running './configure --help'.

Finally, run 'make' to compile the extension. Some source files are generated from .defs files by the code generator. If you see messages like "Could not write...", that just means that certain GTK+ objects or features are not yet supported. If the compilation is successful, run 'make install' to install the extension into your default PHP extension directory.

To test the extension, try running the demo scripts in the demos/ directory, especially phpgtk2-demo.php. These are also good for showing how the extension can be used.

Website

The website for this extension can be found at:

http://gtk.php.net/

This is where you should go to obtain the latest releases and news about PHP-GTK.

Mailing lists

There are several mailing lists for PHP-GTK.

• General list

  This list is for general discussion of PHP-GTK, techniques, problems, development of applications, questions, and other issues.

  List address: [email protected] Subscription: [email protected] Archive: http://marc.info/?l=php-gtk-general

• Developers list

  This list is for those wanting to help with development of PHP-GTK and its extensions.

  List address: [email protected] Subscription: [email protected] Archive: http://marc.info/?l=php-gtk-dev

• Documenters list

  This list is for those discussion and development of PHP-GTK documentation.

  List address: [email protected] Subscription: [email protected] Archive: http://marc.info/?l=php-gtk-doc

To subscribe to any of the lists, send blank email to the appropriate subscription address.

Patches and feedback

Please use the mailing lists for most of your questions -- many people read them and you are more likely to get quicker feedback if you post there first. Patches in the unified diff (diff -u) format should be sent to the developers list (see above).

Acknowledgements

The person I would like to thank the most is James Henstridge [email protected], the author of PyGTK (Python GTK+ bindings). His help and advice have proved invaluable during the development of this extension, and a fair amount of source code is based on or inspired by what he has developed for PyGTK.

I'd also like to thank PHP team for making such a great language and the GTK+ team for developing what has to be the best C-based GUI toolkit.

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